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Now Available: GreekKeys 2015

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GreekKeys 2015
 https://classicalstudies.org/sites/default/files/logo_scs_fixed.png
About GreekKeys 2015 

GreekKeys 2015 is the latest revision of a custom polytonic Greek keyboard program with accompanying fonts that has long been useful to many scholars, teachers, and students of the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. GreekKeys fonts and keyboards provide easy access to many specialized characters (e.g., for metrics, epigraphy, and papyrology) that are absent from most system fonts and that would otherwise have to be entered in roundabout or obscure ways.

If you need only the standard polytonic Greek characters, you may wish to try the free fonts and keyboards that come with Windows OS and Mac OS X. GreekKeys is intended for those with particular scholarly needs and for those who appreciate a simple scheme for the location of the accent characters.

NOTE:  The Society for Classical Studies (SCS) is providing GreekKeys 2015 as a service to the scholarly community but cannot provide support to individual users.  SCS has reduced the price of this software to reflect the fact that the software is being provided on an "as is" basis.  SCS offers and will periodically update a help page for the software.

System Requirements

Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (can also be installed manually on 10.3 or 10.4).
Windows 7, 8, or 10 (not tested with Windows XP, but probably works).
Tested with the latest versions of MS Word as of 2015, but also works with Word 2008 and later for Mac and Word 2003 and later for Windows.

Contents of the Package

This product is supplied only as a download. The download may appear as GreekKeys2015.zip or, if your OS automatically decompresses the archive, as a folder named GreekKeys2015. If your Windows system is set up not to show file extensions, you can recognize the difference by the icon: the compressed version has a zipper on the icon, the uncompressed version appears as an ordinary folder.

The folder contains important documentation as well as the installers and fonts. Please read the QuickStart document before installing, or for fuller instructions with illustrations see the UserGuide document.

Non-member purchasers should archive a copy of the download in a safe location and medium (such as cloud storage or a backup disk), so that it will be available after a total computer failure or loss or replacement.

What’s New in GreekKeys 2015

If you already own GreekKeys 2008, what are the benefits of upgrading?
  • GreekKeys 2015 is free to members of the SCS.
  • Mac OS X keyboards contain corrections of some omissions affecting complex key entries and have added access to some recently-approved official Unicode code points.
  • Mac OS X keyboards now contain a language definition, which obviates certain incompatibilities that arose in MS Word 2011 for Mac.
  • New Mac installer does not require a restart.
  • Windows keyboards have been slightly revised to work around incompatibilities that arise on some Windows systems.
  • Windows keyboards have added access to some recently-approved official Unicode code points.
  • GreekKeys fonts now use a format of OpenType substitution that works automatically in most cases (no need to figure out how to turn on ligatures).
  • GreekKeys fonts now contain precomposed glyphs for lowercase Greek letters with overstroke (for numerals or for citing words).
  • GreekKeys fonts have added some recently approved Unicode characters, and minor aesthetic improvements and corrections have been made.
  • Documentation has been brought up to date (partly to reflect changes in nomenclature and organization used in the latest OS versions), with more illustrations of installation process, better Keyboard Charts, and improved and updated documentation of Private Use Area characters and precomposed characters of interest to advanced users.
Pricing

GreekKeys 2015 is free to members of the SCS. Log in to the SCS web site and then proceed to the purchase page.

Individuals who are not members of the SCS must first create an account on the SCS web site, but then may buy GreekKeys for $20.00 through the purchase page.

Departmental licenses are also available to departments that are departmental members of the SCS. (Departmental membership is separate from individual membership.)  The small department license is limited to 9 or fewer users and costs $100. The unlimited department license costs $200. But the unlimited license is free to departments paying dues at the Supporting or Sustaining level. Departmental licenses for GreekKeys 2015 include an extended license for distribution to students at no extra charge.  For more information, see the Departmental Membership page.

Purchase/Download
- See more at: https://classicalstudies.org/publications-and-research/about-greekkeys-2015#sthash.mxOmfh2R.dpuf

Open Access Journal: The Pompeiiana Newsletter

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[First posted in AWOL 13 February 2009, updated 11 November 2015]

The Pompeiiana Newsletter
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The Pompeiiana Newsletter was created and edited by Bernard Barcio and ran from 1974 through 2003. Pompeiiana offered a place for Latin students to publish comics, stories, games, and articles, and was a beloved resource for Latin teachers. In 2008, Barcio granted Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers the rights for all of Pompeiiana. This blog will make all 229 issues freely available to Latin teachers, students, and others interested in Classics, one issue per day.
This commenced Thursday, February 12, 2009 with Volume I, Number 1, October 1974  and was completed Wednesday March 10, 2010 with the final issue Volume XXIX.9, May 2003

This project is brought to us by Andrew Reinhard, who at that time worked for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc.


Open Access Journal: Pirradaziš: Bulletin of Achaemenian Studies

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Open Access Monograph Series: Lingua Aegyptia. Studia Monographica

Cuneiform Commentaries Project Update

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Cuneiform Commentaries Project Newsletter
Several new texts have been recently added to the corpus of the Cuneiform Commentaries Project.

Thanks are expressed to the following scholars, who have contributed their editions and feedback: Irving Finkel, Uri Gabbay, Ulla Koch, Strahil Panayotov, and Henry Stadhouders. We would like to renew or invitation for Assyriologists around the world to contribute their editions of as yet unedited commentary tablets, for which they will receive full credit.

Best wishes,

Enrique Jiménez (Senior Editor of CCP)

***

CCP 3.1.16 (Enūma Anu Enlil 16-20): This long and well-preserved tablet contains a commentary on the series of astrological omens Enūma Anu Enlil. The entries explained in the tablet are extracted mainly from chapter 16th of that series, which deals with lunar eclipses.1 In addition, the last entries of the tablet comment on entries from the 19th tablet of Enūma Anu Enlil, which is devoted to the same topic.

CCP 4.1.13.A (Sagig 13 (?)): This small tablet contains entries of a commentary on an unknown text. The tablet was published a hundred years ago by J.-V. Scheil under the title “tablette scolaire d’Uruk avec gloses et vocabulaire.” An Uruk provenience of the tablet seems indeed very likely – note that tablets from Uruk started to flood European collections in 1913.

CCP 4.1.13.B (Sagig 13 and 12/14 (?)): This small tablet contains a complete commentary on the series of medical diagnoses and prognoses Sagig. According to its ṣâtu 3b subscript, preserved on the lower edge of the tablet, the ten first entries of the text pertain to a chapter whose incipit would be ¶ GIG KIŠIB.

CCP 4.2.B (Therapeutic B): This tablet contains a well-preserved commentary of twenty-seven lines that was found during the eleventh campaign of excavations of the Oriental Institute at Nippur (1972/1973). More specifically, it was found in a trash pit dating to the Persian period, in area WA. The tablet was subsequently published by M. Civil.

CCP 4.2.G (Therapeutic G): This tablet preserves a commentary on an unidentified therapeutic text. According to its rubric, it is a ṣâtu 6a commentary on a tablet whose incipit is šumma amēlu qaqqassu īta[nakkalšu] (?), “If a person’s head cau[ses him pain].” Moreover, according to its subscript the tablet would represent the second section ([pirsu]) of the elusive series Bulṭu bīt Dābibi,1 “Prescriptions of the house of Dābibi,” a series mentioned in the rubrics of commentaries from Nippur (CCP 4.2.B and CCP 4.2.P) and also in BM 59607 (CCP 4.2.Q), from the “Sippar Collection.”

CCP 4.2.U (Therapeutic U): This small tablet, which belongs to the British Museum’s “Sippar Collection,” contains a commentary on a medical text.1 It is written in the tabular format, although several entries span more than one row, and in some cases the column division is altogether ignored (e.g. a 16 and b 19′).

CCP 4.3.u4 (Sagig 14?): This small fragment contains meager remains of a commentary on a medical text. The rare phrase kalīt zikartīšu, “the kidneys of his manhood” (i.e., the testicles), which appears in line r 3′ of the present text, is elsewhere known only in the 14th chapter of the medical series of prognoses and diagnoses (Sagig).

CCP 6.1.2.B (Aa I/2): This fragment contains remains of a commentary on a text of uncertain nature. The fact that it features a technical lexical term (KA.KA.SI.GA, b 3′) suggests that the base text may be of lexical nature.

CCP 7.2.u32 (Uncertain, Rituals and qualifications of the diviner): The present tablet is a damaged treatise of heterogeneous character. Its contents are rather miscellaneous: the obverse contains what appears to be a commentary, in which the different entries are divided by means of a triple colon; whereas the reverse seems to feature a list, not a commentary.

CCP 7.2.u97 (Uncertain): This small fragment, which was drawn to our attention by N. Veldhuis, contains remains of a commentary in tabular format.

The British Museum at Google Cultural Institute

Open Access Journal: Histoire de la médecine en Egypte ancienne

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Open Access Journal Backlist: Journal of the Society of Oriental Research

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Journal of the Society of Oriental Research
Corporate Author: Society of Oriental Research.
Other Authors: Mercer, Samuel A. B. 1880,
Language(s): English
Published: Toronto [etc.] Society of Oriental Research. 


Recently Published at Archaeopress: Open Access

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Recently Published at Archaeopress: Open Access
Proceedings of the 17th Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology. SOMA 2013 Moscow, 25-27 April 2013

edited by Sergei Fazlullin, Mazlum Mert Antika. 262 pages.

Papers from the 17th Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology, SOMA 2013 held in Moscow, 25-27 April 2013.
  Download (pdf) 
These downloads are single-user and for your own personal use only.
For help and information please email archaeo@archaeopress.com


The Barracks of the Roman Army from the 1st to 3rd Centuries A.D.

A comparative study of the barracks from fortresses, forts and fortlets with an analysis of building types and construction, stabling and garrisons by David P. Davison. 940 pages.

A comparative study of the barracks from fortresses, forts and fortlets with an analysis of building types and construction, stabling and garrisons. Originally published as BAR S472 in 1989.
  Download (pdf) 
These downloads are single-user and for your own personal use only.
For help and information please email archaeo@archaeopress.com

Etudes sur la céramique romaine tardive d’Afrique

Author: Michel Bonifay. viii+525 pages; 269 figures, maps, plans, drawing, photographs; 3 colour plates; 4 tables. Typological Index. French text.

The subject of this work is the pottery (amphorae, vessels, lamps, small objects and architectural ceramic) of Roman Africa from the 2nd to the 7th century. It is based on a large assemblage from several settlements in south of France (Marseilles), in Tunisia (Nabeul, Hammamet/Pupput, Sidi Jdidi, Oudhna, Carthage, Thuburbo Majus, El Jem) and in the Eastern Mediterranean (Alexandria, Beirut). In the first part, the author examines different aspects of production (epigraphy, petrography, workshops, technology). The second part is devoted to the typology and the chronology of amphorae, red slip ware, cooking wares, coarse ware, handmade wares, lamps, figurines and moulds, tiles and vaulting tubes, with some new proposals for classification and dating. Economic patterns are discussed in the third part, including the processes of commercialisation (outside and inside Africa), the contents of amphorae and the historical interpretations of the large diffusion of African pottery.

Originally published in print as British Archaeological Reports International Series 1301. (Archaeopress, Oxford, 2004). Print version available here.

  Download (pdf) 
These downloads are single-user and for your own personal use only.
For help and information please email archaeo@archaeopress.com

Open Greek and Latin Project

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Open Greek and Latin Project of the Open Philology Project
http://www.dh.uni-leipzig.de/wo/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/logo_opp.png
The ultimate goal is to represent every source text produced in Classical Greek or Latin from antiquity through the present, including texts preserved in manuscript tradition as well as on inscriptions, papyri, ostraca and other written artifacts.  Over the course of the next five years, we will focus upon converting as much Greek and Latin, available as scanned printed books, into an open, dynamic corpus, continuously augmented and improved by a combination of automated processes and human contributions of many kinds. The focus upon Greek and Latin reflects both the belief that we have an obligation to disseminate European cultural heritage and the observation that recent advances in OCR technology for Greek and Latin make these intertwined languages ready for large-scale work.

The Open Greek and Latin Project aims at providing at least one version for all Greek and Latin sources produced during antiquity (through c. 600 CE) and a growing collection from the vast body of post-classical Greek and Latin that still survives. Perhaps 150 million words of Greek and Latin, preserved in manuscripts, on stone, on papyrus or other writing surface, survive from antiquity. Analysis of 10,000 books in Latin, downloaded from Archive.org, identified more than 200 million words of post-classical Latin. With 70,000 public domain books listed in the Hathi Trust as being in Ancient Greek or Latin, the amount of Greek and Latin already available will almost certainly exceed 1 billion words.

Where existing corpora of Greek and Latin have generally included one edition of a work, Open Greek and Latin Corpus is designed to manage multiple versions of, and to represent the complete textual history of, a work: every manuscript, every papyrus fragment, and every printed edition are all versions within the history of a text. In the short run, this involves using OCR-technology optimized for Classical Greek and Latin to create an open corpus that is reasonably comprehensive for the c. 100 million words produced through c. 600 CE and that begins to make available the billions of words produced after 600 CE in Greek and Latin that survive.

Open Greek & Latin Texts

A collection of machine-corrected XML versions of classical authors and works, freely available to download and reuse. For more information, click on the tabs below. Texts are published in GitHub on an ongoing basis. Watch this space and our Facebook page for updates.

athenaeus-dev

The works of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Greek rhetorician and grammarian.

church_fathers_dev

A selection of Church Fathers.

english_trans-dev

English translations of classical works.

misc-dev

An undefined collection of TEI and EpiDoc versions of classical texts.

cag-dev

The Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.

csel-dev

The Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum.

fragmentary-dev

A Collection of classical fragmentary authors and works.

italian_trans-dev

Italian translations of classical works.

patrologia_latina-dev

The Patrologia Latina.

catenae-dev

The Catenae Graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum.

dfhg-dev

The Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum.

french_trans-dev

French translations of classical works.

libanius-dev

The works of the Greek rhetorician Libanius.

philo-dev

The works of Philo Judaeus, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher.

New Online at the CHS: The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics

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The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics, by Christos Tsagalis
The Oral PalimpsestThe Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the online publication of The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics, by Christos Tsagalis on the CHS website. The work is also available for purchase in print through Harvard University Press.
Oral intertextuality is an innate feature of the web of myth, whose interrelated fabrics allow the audience of epic song to have access to an entire horizon of diverse variants of a story. The Oral Palimpsest argues that just as the erased text of a palimpsest still carries traces of its previous writing, so the Homeric tradition unfolds its awareness of alternative versions in the act of producing the signs of their erasure.
In this light, “Homer” reflects the concerted effort to create a Panhellenic canon of epic song, through which we can still retrieve the poikilia (roughly, “dappled, embroidered variation”) of various interwoven fabrics belonging to recognizable song-traditions or even older Indo-European strata.
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Christos Tsagalis is Associate Professor of Greek Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Mailing List: Sudan Dams Crisis

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Mailing List: Sudan Dams Crisis
New Dams on the Nile and Atbara and their effects on human rights, environment, and heritage.

The last dam built on the Nile, at the Fourth Cataract, was completed in 2008, displacing more than 60,000 people and flooding 170 kilometers of the river valley and adjacent land.  The entire non-desert habitat was lost along with a human heritage that included vast numbers of archaeological sites.  This followed on the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960's that displaced 150,000, with even greater damage to the environment and heritage.

Now, eight or more dams are planned and two are under contract, at Kajbar at the Third Cataract and Shereik at the Fifth.  The region of Mahas in the Third Cataract is especially populated, with a long and rich history is now directly threatened with destruction.  The area upstream of Shereik is less populated, but very poorly known.  It is a crisis that was discussed at a brief conference at the British Museum on May 15, 2012.

This forum is intended to disseminate news and ideas about the dams crises in Sudan and Egypt, past and present, to help develop means to mitigate and possibly even avert some of the worst consequences.

To subscribe, go to: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/sudandamscrisis

Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum (CPhCl)

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 [First posted in AWOL  20 January 2011. Updated 14 November 2015]

Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum (CPhCl)
http://www.aristarchus.unige.it/cphcl/images/banner.gif
THE CATALOGUS
The Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum (CPhCl) provides a reference tool for all those who study greek and latin antiquity, specifically useful for studies on the history of classical scholarship in the modern age. It is an encyclopaedic lexicon collecting the bio-bibliographical data about classical philologists and it is a continuation and improvement of W. Pökel’s Philologisches Schriftstellerlexikon, Leipzig 1882. Only deceased scholars are included.
THE HISTORY OF THE CATALOGUS
The Catalogus started off with the 1984 CNR international conference "La filologia classica nel secolo XX" (strongly supported by Scevola Mariotti) and with its proceedings, published in Pisa in 1989. Subsequently the preparation of a Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum has begun at the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica of the University of Pisa, with the financial support of CNR, and has been on-line since 2003, within the web-site Aristarchus, thanks to a cooperation between the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica of the University of Pisa and the Dipartimento di Archeologia e Filologia Classica (D.AR.FI.CL.ET.) of the University of Genoa.
THE CATALOGUS TODAY
The CPhCl has become an international network since 2009. The central unit, which has its head office at the Dipartimento di Archeologia e Filologia Classica of the University of Genoa, is responsible for the coordination and supervision of the whole project, as well as the administration of the website. The cards concerning the scholars have been attributed to the local units according to geographic and linguistic criteria. A three-letter abbreviation identifies the country of the unit which is responsible for each card.

For specific information about the cards you can write an e-mail to the relevant unit, provided it has started its activity. Since CPhCl is a work in progress the units are continually developing their competence and skills. In the meantime you can write an e-mail to the central unit about the whole project or about cards that have not yet been attributed to a specific unit.
You should be aware that mistakes and shortcomings of various kinds are inevitable at this stage: we are sorry for them and very grateful for any suggestion on your part.
To access the free service you have just to sign in with your e-mail address when the relevant window appears.
To display a file example click here.
Cards status Total: 9078
Available: 917
Programmed: 8161

Last updated: 13-11-2015

    Open Access Monograph Series: École Française d'Athènes, Travaux et mémoires

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    École Française d'Athènes, Travaux et mémoires


    See AWOL's full list of open access publications at:

    Open Access Journal: Apuntes de Egiptología

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    [First posted in AWOL 20 May 2012, updated 14 November 2015 (links now to Internet Archive)]

    Apuntes de Egiptología
    Apuntes de Egiptología es una publicación periódica del Centro de Estudios del Antiguo Egipto(C.E.A.E.) de Buenos Aires, República Argentina, Sudamérica.
     
    Nº 4 - 2008
    •  en preparación –

    International Association for Coptic Studies - Association Internationale d'Études Coptes

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    International Association for Coptic Studies - Association Internationale d'Études Coptes
    The IACS was founded in occasion of the First International Congress of Coptology in Cairo: Colloquium on the Future of Coptic Studies, 11-17 December 1976. 

    The Association is a non-profit organization designed to encourage and contribute to the progress of all aspects of Coptic Studies. It promotes international cooperation among individuals as well as among organizations and institutions. It advances the dissemination of information about work in progress, new discoveries and new results, organize periodic Congresses on Coptic Studies, facilitate full access to and the rapid publication of source materials, identify priorities for research at a given time, bring to the attention of younger scholars the whole range of Coptic Studies, etc.
    Congress 2016
    Congress 2012
    Congress 2008
    Presentation of IACS
    Members
    News
    Journal
    Exhibitions
    Newsletter
    Courses
    Centres
    Congresses
    Recommended Links

    Open Access Journal: International Association for Coptic Studies, NEWSLETTER / BULLETIN D'INFORMATION

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     [First posted in AWOL 12 March 2011, updated (new address) 15 November 2015]

    International Association for Coptic Studies, NEWSLETTER / BULLETIN D'INFORMATION
    The IACS publishes a Newsletter as an organ of information about Coptologists and their work. It is sent without charge to all members. Thirty-seven issues (with some special appendices) were published between 1976 and 1998. Copies of back issues are available to members upon request.



    The Newsletter regularly publishes: (a) news about the Congresses of Coptic Studies and meetings of the IACS board; (b) the list of names and addresses of IACS members; (c) lists of publications in preparation, forthcoming, or recently published, as announced by members.

    New Open Access Journal: Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin

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    Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin
    ISSN: 2410-0951
    http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/COMST/comstlogo.png
    The Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin (ISSN 2410-0951, since 2015) has succeeded the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter as the main organ of the European network in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies. 

    It is a biannual peer-reviewed international journal, published on-line (under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license) and on paper as print-on-demand.

    It is dedicated to the vast variety of issues concerned with the research into the oriental manuscript traditions, from instrumental analysis, to codicology and palaeography, to critical text editing, to manuscript preservation, to the application of digital tools to manuscript research. The geographical focus is the Mediterranean Near East, with its wide array of language traditions including, though not limiting to, Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Caucasian Albanian, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Slavonic, Syriac, and Turkish.
    1/1 (2015)

    Open Access Journal: Réflexion(s) – Regards croisés sur le monde antique et le monde moderne

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    [First posted in AWOL 19 October 2011, updated 15 November 2015]

    Réflexion(s) – Regards croisés sur le monde antique et le monde moderne
    ISSN : 2100-0034
    http://reflexions.univ-perp.fr/templates/beez_20/images/reflexions.jpg
    Réflexion(s) est une revue thématique réalisée par des spécialistes de l'antiquité gréco-latine.



    Chaque thème analyse une question qui intéresse le monde actuel en la mettant en relation avec des événements, des textes ou des personnages antiques. Notre but est de réfléchir autrement sur notre temps et nos sociétés, mais aussi de comprendre pourquoi la connaissance de notre antiquité est encore indispensable pour penser le monde d'aujourd'hui. Ce but est, plus largement, le but des études classiques : la lecture de Cicéron ou la visite des ruines de Pompéi sont un miroir dans lequel nous pouvons apprendre à voir avec un peu de recul (et donc un peu plus clairement) notre époque.



    Nous t'invitons donc, lecteur, à pratiquer avec nous ce que, depuis les travaux du philosophe allemand H.G. Gadamer, on appelle le "cercle herméneutique" : lorsque nous abordons l'antiquité, nous ne l'interprétons pas avec un esprit vierge, mais avec une conception des choses (actuelles et antiques) déjà formée (Heidegger parlerait de "préconception"). Mais la réalité de l'aspect de l'antiquité que nous examinons ne correspond pas forcément avec cette préconception, ce qui nous oblige à la modifier et non seulement change ensuite le regard que nous porterons sur l'antiquité mais nous invite aussi à concevoir différemment, ne serait-ce qu'en l'interrogeant, le monde contemporain. De ce mouvement circulaire qui s'instaure entre la chose antique et notre esprit au fur et à mesure que s'enrichit notre réflexion, naît un changement radical de notre regard sur nous-mêmes.

    OCIANA: Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia

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    OCIANA: Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia
    ociana logo bluegold


      
    The Arabian Peninsula lies at the heart of the Middle East. Today, it is of enormous strategic and commercial importance and this was also the case in antiquity. Yet, most of what we know about its ancient history, languages and cultures comes from contemporaries looking at it from outside, such as the Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans, or from much later reports on what was considered the "Age of Ignorance". Excavations and surveys have been undertaken in the rest of the Middle East for more than a century and a half, but the archaeological exploration of Arabia is still in a pioneering stage. For a brief history of Ancient Arabia and a timeline click here.
    The western two-thirds of the Arabian Peninsula were home to numerous literate societies. Indeed, one of the two branches of the alphabet — the South Semitic script family — was used exclusively in ancient Arabia, and still exists in the vocalized alphabets used in Ethiopia. Throughout the Peninsula, literacy was extremely widespread, not only among the settled peoples but — exceptionally — also among the nomads, who covered the rocks of the deserts from southern Syria to Yemen with scores of thousands of graffiti, many of which give us a vivid picture of their daily life and emotions.

    Scholars and travellers have been recording Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in what is now Syria, Jordan and Arabia since the 1858, and by now some 70,000 are known, with more being discovered every year. However, their finds have been published in hundreds of books and articles in numerous languages and many are extremely difficult to track down, even for the specialist. There are also very few research tools such as up-to-date lists of names, grammars, dictionaries, etc.

    The Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia [OCIANA] aims to transform our knowledge of the history, languages and cultures of ancient Arabia. It is doing this by creating a digital corpus of all known pre-Islamic inscriptions in North and Central Arabia. It provides a reading of each text both in roman transliteration and in fonts reproducing the ancient letters, together with a translation in English, references to earlier readings, commentary where necessary, bibliography, and all known information about the inscription (provenance, carving technique, relationship to other texts or to rock drawings, structures, etc.). Photographs (when available) and facsimiles of each text will also be shown on each record and will eventually be downloadable free at publishable resolutions. The Corpus will be easily updatable as new discoveries are made and will be fully searchable for names, words, grammatical features and subjects.
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